Spectral Compendium
by lifeincantos
Summary: A collection of drabbles, one shots, and mini-arcs. The latest: After Tucker's brief stint as mayor of Amity Park ends, he needs a little help from his friends.
1. Just Another Day

Just Another Day

Warnings for: some blood and mental self abuse

* * *

_It only hurts when I breathe_

Danny is intimately familiar with rib injuries by this point in his life. Four years of ghost hunting will do that to a person and as he's never been a particularly careful kid, he's been intimately acquainted with nearly every building of significant height- and a few _not_- that Amity Park has to offer.

This case in particular has seen yet another routine battle that culminated in Skulker being sucked into the Fenton Thermos and Danny taking a spectacular belly flop onto the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. The irony was not lost on him, not in the slightest, but he is too busy nursing his bruised ribs to particularly care about the poetic twist.

In four years, you run into a lot of poetic twists.

He's learned the difference between a break and a bruise, and he's deemed himself perfectly fine- just a little banged up. Tucker had wanted him to at least give himself a more thorough examination and Danny hadn't missed Sam's hovering, but he ignored both of them in favor of brushing the injury off.

It's easier to do that at home in his bed, though. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to find a position that alleviates the pressure enough so he can at least _pretend_ to pay attention to whatever it is Lancer is talking about. Something poetry-related. Danny is starting to despise poetry.

He can feel Sam's eyes on the back of his neck, and Tucker's gaze doesn't go unnoticed in his periphery. He would shrug them off, make a motion to tell them to _pay attention_, but he is barely breathing as it was and staying conscious feels like a better use of his energy than engaging in an exercise of futility.

"_Mister Foley_," Lancer breaths sharply, leveling a knowing gaze at Tucker who snaps into a more upright position. "Can you tell me what we said Whitman wanted to convey in this except?"

"-Er- no, sorry."

"I see."

Lancer marks something in his agenda, and Tucker slumps a little in his seat. One question does not a grade make, but Danny is well aware that Tuck had gained traction in Sophomore year and by now is poised to finish at the top of his class. When he isn't worrying about the injuries his friend is accumulating.

Danny's breath hitches for an entirely different reason.

* * *

_It only hurts when I try_

Jazz is always collected. Her hair is always fixed, every errant strand viciously quashed under her headband. Her books are always neat, and even the post-its sticking out the top and sides line up just so. Her clothes are neatly pressed- never mussed from dorm living. Her bed is precisely made. Her papers are perfect, her tests are aced.

_-Text sent Monday 9:15 a.m., Danny: Hey little bro, it's a been a while. Everything good?_

"Still pulling a marathon study session?"

Jazz smiles at her roommate, the expression hitting just the right mix of sheepishness and breezy greeting. "Yup. This stuff won't get done on its own."

Melanie laughs and touches up her makeup while peering into the mirror on the inside of her closet. "Gotta hand it to you, I could never do that. You're crazy- but that's great."

"Well you got the _crazy_ right."

"Maybe you should chill a bit." She walks over to the bed and exchanges her backpack for a purse before stopping at the door. "We miss you at dinner, you know. Especially your boyfriend. It's been awhile."

Jazz freezes, pen poised over her notebook. She's caught, her throat tight. But she is spared by Melanie waving goodbye and shutting the door behind her.

_-Text received, Monday, 4:29 p.m, Ethan: Hey darling, it's been a few days. Still holed up there? Need me to bring refreshments?_

She stands, pushing the chair in and crossing to their bathroom. It isn't much but a private bathroom is rare and she's grateful. Jazz gently hits the switch and waits for the overhead lights to flash and flicker. They always take awhile before the glow evens into something weak and washed out but steady.

The mirror is cracked and dirty. Jazz tried to clean and fix it at the beginning of the year but it was a lost cause and resulted only in a touch of tennis elbow. So instead she ignores the state of it and washes her face, viciously scrubbing her nose and rubbing the skin under her eyes once, twice, a third time before rinsing.

_-Text received, Tuesday, 8:36 a.m., Ethan: Just thinking about you. Text me back. _

When she looks at herself again, her whole face is red. Rivulets of water pool at her tear ducts and drip from her nose. But even the freshness of her exfoliation can't mask the darkness that haunts the corners of her mouth, the bags under her eyes, the way her forehead looks strained and alien to her. The way the overhead light washes out the healthiness from her cheeks and reveals the sunken contours over her bones.

She turns and slams one hand on the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. Jazz can't look at herself.

_-Text sent, Wednesday, 5:22 p.m., Danny: Sam said you weren't doing too well, what's going on with you?_

_-Text received, Thursday, 12:00 p.m., Ethan: Guess you're not there. I'm going to be away this weekend._

She has to keep going. She has to try.

* * *

_It only hurts when I think_

Tucker's DOOMED account has been inactive for two and a half years.

His collection of video games stopped growing three years ago, and has been gathering dust in the corner of his closet for a little over one.

For eight months, when his television turns on it's already set to Amity Local News.

His homepage on his computer had been GamerUnlimited in freshman year, Wire News in sophomore, Casper High's main site junior year, and now opens to College Daily every time he opens the browser.

He's had a bookcase since he was sixteen and now, at seventeen, it's been filled three quarters of the way up.

The scene has become familiar by now; his shoulders ache and his eyes burn but he barely moves as he sits, hunched over his desk. His computer is on, but he barely glances at it- only to click through whatever database he needs at the moment to complete his outline. It's grown to three pages of yellow legal paper but even when he pauses he taps his pencil nervously against the margin until it's covered in little dashes and errant marks.

When his eyes drift away from the paper, he snaps them violently back. Sometimes it makes his head spin, but that's okay. Tucker doesn't mind it when his spins. It's almost as good as when it's full to bursting.

The other thoughts can't get in.

Thoughts like _what college would ever want me?_ Or how can I pay for it? Or _how can I ever leave? I can't leave. I can't ever leave_.

And sometimes, sometimes, _I want to go_.

Then the guilt swallows him and he has to take notes on the Communist Manifesto or Advanced Placement Physics to drive away the blackness that tangles in his gut and makes him nauseous. The solution isn't permanent but Tucker's always been great at pretending. Sometimes he just needs a little help getting started.

When he can't control the twitching, he manically calculates his GPA over and over again. _Out of four it would 3.9, 3.9, 3.9? Yes, 3.9 that's right, because of those Bs_. He clicks through his portfolio of grades online, tallying each A to soothe the beast that quivers in his chest. And once he's breathing steadily again, he goes back to the outline for his history paper.

_I want to go, but I can't. Or I shouldn't_.

… _Nuclear weapons proliferation in the twentieth century began as_...

He's great at pretending. He's even better at lying.

* * *

_It only hurts when I cry_

She looks at herself for so long in the mirror she her face doesn't resemble a face anymore. It's broken into lines and sections and planes- a construct dreamed up by an architect and assembled by an engineer. Without feeling or judgement. When she deconstructs herself, sometimes she can see herself that way too.

There are smudges around her eyes where her makeup hasn't washed away completely. Her nose comes down, straight and unyielding, until it ends in a blunt tip. The way her bangs fall makes her angry- chopped up and the ends tangling with her eyelashes on the right side. Her neck supports a head too heavy to be held up.

Sam stares impassively at the picture looking back at her, nodding as if to say _yes, this person exists_. It's the most neutral phrase she can conjure. She exists. Her skin is warm and her limbs move. Her organs circulate blood and oxygen and her mind buzzes. As a human being, she exists.

Even that breaks her heart a little bit.

The vestiges of her confidence remain. She wears them like armor, steps into her labels and smiles with the best of them. _Vegan, goth, friend, daughter, woman_. Definitions that she fits in with little fight or negotiation on her end.

_Defender, critic, champion_.

Playing her part has been so easy that she's convinced herself she enjoys it. And maybe on some days she does. Laying out in the grass under the sun as a friend, or butting heads with her mother as a daughter. Dressing as a goth, arguing as a defender.

_Athlete, reader, artist_.

She always liked seeing the beauty in things, and she hopes that isn't something she conjured out of a need to be someone. If she gets to keep one good thing, just one, it'd be that. Artist. It feels warm and soft against her, encases her in something that apologizes for her faults- all of them. Even the darkest and deepest within.

_Ally, geek, warrior_.

Sam lifts one hand, studies it in the light of her bathroom. The polish on the tips of her fingers is cracked and peeling off. She'll have to redo that soon. But maybe not tonight. Or, at least, not now. Because her reflection is doing that _thing_ where the pull apart sections are coming together again and the whole image is turning back into her reflection and not just an abstract assembly of pieces.

_Selfish_.

What she wants to say is that she does what she does for the good of her friends. For the good of the city. But it's not like she decided to be the one to pull on the hazmat and walk into a ghost portal, knowing full well what it would do to her; goaded on by her friend only to half die. Twice.

_Murderer_.

No, she's the just the one that pushed him in- not only once but turned back time to do it again because she wasn't _happy_ with how things turned out otherwise.

_Nonentity_.

The truth of the matter is that Sam doesn't know who she is without the definitions. If they disappear, she's pretty sure she will too. Even the blood on her hands is necessary to be a real person. To exist.

She stares at the back of her hand while her eyes sting and overflow; she can't look at her reflection as the sobs cut her chest in half because there's one more label that fits snugly around everything that she is.

_Coward_.

* * *

_It only hurts when I work_

Maddie stands at the threshold of what used to be her daughter's bedroom. Her arms are bundled against her chest, tight enough to hurt and sure enough to drive away the feelings. She can see Jazz now, sitting on her bed, a mountain of books stacked neatly on the nightstand. In her later years, laughing was a foreign sound in the Fenton home but Maddie thinks back to that vague time before, when Jazz's giggles were like bursts of light and clarity.

_Before_. It stalks her because Maddie simply can't understand when or why this divide happened. She was content at first to ascribe it to her children growing older and drifting away. Danny, once clear eyed and happy became withdrawn and sullen. Jazz, once tenacious and bright, became consumed mind and soul with her future. It was what children did, wasn't it?

But she knows. While the Fenton family has challenged even the idea that normal doesn't exist, whatever had happened to the four of them wasn't some natural process driven by time and social pressure. It was like- some _switch_ had been hit and in one long and steep slope, she had lost her family.

"Momma, don't look yet!" Jazz had demanded frantically from behind her closed door. Maddie had waited, a wry smile on her lips that broadened when her daughter finally emerged, too-big goggles on her head, a large white shirt draped over her shoulders, and boots swimming around her little ankles.

Maddie had cooed appreciatively, bringing her hands together. "You look lovely!"

Jazz had laughed, loud and high, as she explained, "I'm a scientist, just like you!"

And to assist, Maddie had bent down, adjusted the borrowed goggles and ersatz lab coat to facilitate her daughter's pretend scientific work. All the while, Jazz had rattled off all the jargon she had picked up in school and around the house.

She had always known her daughter would grow up but in that moment she'd been blind.

"Hey."

The footsteps behind her alerts her to Danny's presence, and though his greeting is more a syllable than an actual word it _is_ something. She almost turns, but can't bring herself to actually move and see him. The sound of footsteps has slowed and stopped- which is unusual. She had expected the click of his door shutting.

Gingerly, he ventures, "Mom?"

Without turning, Maddie replies, "Yes dear, hello."

"I, uh- I'll be in my room."

Maddie doesn't say anything, and eventually the sound of his door closing greets her ears. She stands stock still by Jazz's room.

Tomorrow, she'll look at him again. She'll see the lies that line his face and the defeated slump of his shoulders that no eighteen year old should possess. She'll see the future that he used to cling to with such optimism and has now given up on. Tomorrow, she'll be able to process all of it the best she can.

Tomorrow, she'll be strong.

But today, she tears herself away from the hole her daughter used to fill and creeps down the stairs, through the kitchen, and to the lab. She has to keep the remnants of her family together, and if she breaks now she'll never pull herself back together.

So today, she works.

* * *

_It only hurts when I play_

"Danny!"

He tumbles down from his position in the sky. The body beside him is a blur as he hurtles away and his mind is singularly focused as he pulls himself up less than a foot above the ground. It's not a sure stance- no midair stance _is_, but he's losing a little too much vital substance and he's shakier as a result. Danny doesn't need to look at the gash in his side to know that a frothy mix of red and green is bubbling and oozing down his stomach, his hip, his leg. He can feel the tacky substance; it's all the reminder he needs.

Instead, he turns his gaze up until he spots Dani. Her green eyes are wide and her chest heaves in a mix of fear and determination. His own eyes narrow and to reassure her he kicks off and hovers until he's at level with her.

"Danny that was-"

"Later, okay?"

"No, _not later_-"

They are interrupted by an ecto blast being hurled their way. Dani is fast, now. She dips lithely and zips below Danny's feet while he backpedals and conjures ice shards that rocket towards the ghost. It howls, grabbing its face while Dani takes advantage of the distraction and sends a few slicing disks of ectoplasm its way.

The finishing blow is the Fenton Thermos. It takes the two of them gripping with white knuckles to fight the rage of the beast being sucked within. As soon as it's over, Danny descends. He doesn't collapse- he can't, he has a job to do- but his counterpart doesn't seem to buy the act.

"_You shouldn't have done that_," she chastises, sharp as her attack as she pushes him to a sitting position on the sidewalk. He allows it, one hand reaching out to grasp her elbow. "That was really stupid, I'm strong enough to handle it and now you're hurt and you _made me feel like an idiot_."

The last accusation stings because he knows it's true. Playing the white knight isn't something he wants to do- not with anyone. But it's hard to resolve his instincts with logic sometimes and the heat of battle is one of them.

It's not the only reason, though.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't let you have _all_ the fun," he informs her, a teasing lilt coloring his tone. She rolls her eyes.

"God, I can't believe I'm related to you."

"You wound me."

"No- _you_ wound you. Idiot."

Dani's hands are now pressing against the slice and he flinches back. She is unafraid- she is always unafraid and that terrifies him. Instinct pushes him to look at what she's doing. He nearly gags at the sight of green and red foaming around her knuckles and trickling down the valleys of her hands.

Blood, ghostly or otherwise, is nothing new. He gets it- it's part of the superhero shtick and even Tucker, whose gore tolerance was considerably less in real life than in anything animated, had learned to live with it by now. But Danny is seized in a tremor of panic, forgetting for a moment that Danielle has been stabilized and that the mess of green and red is his own.

"Dani-" he starts to say but catches himself. She's concentrating fiercely on the side of his abdomen and the pain doesn't let him forget for long that she's not the one who needs saving.

"Yeah, yeah, stuff your excuses in a sack. Okay, I think it's slowing- that's good. Can you fly? We should get you back to your room with all the first aid stuff."

Unable to find his voice, he nods and pushes himself to stand. The gash is pretty grisly, stretching from the top of his hip and winding its way up to the bottom of his chest. He stares in mute fascination and the thought comes unbidden to him- _I'm unraveling_.

But Dani pokes him in the head and tugs the arm on his side and he remembers to leave those thoughts- the ones that haunt him at night- behind as they take off for FentonWorks.

She patches him up with clumsy fingers that somehow get the job done and Danny can't send her away. So they lay on his bed for a long while, breathing heavily in the silence of the house- empty save for them. After a while, Dani falls into a nap. Her limbs are sprawled gracelessly over his covers and he lets himself laugh for a brief moment. It doesn't take him by surprise anymore just how much of himself there is in her. It doesn't even take him by surprise when he notices how different they are.

But now his eyes are glued to her. Her head, her back, her cleaned hands. The way her hair frizzes at the ends when she isn't patting it down. The way she's not still, not for a second. Her chest and stomach ebb and flow, her arms twitch, her lips cycle through frowns and smiles.

He lets the image fill him up. Even after three years, there's no other way to get the image of her extremities dissolving from his mind. But there's still no cure for the itchiness that lives in his own skin, and the fevered conjectures of his adrenalin-addled mind.

She's whole, so he has to be too.

"I won't disappear," he promises the ambivalent room. Whether physically or metaphorically he doesn't know, but it's important. There needs to be some trace of him in this world that's not just a stain on the pavement.

He slips into sleep, and in his dreams he melts.

* * *

_It only hurts when I move_

Jack Fenton smiles.

He smiles as he sits down to eat breakfast. Most of his cereal ends up on the floor as he has a habit of gesticulating a little too wildly with his spoon-hand as he talks, so he gets up, gets some more, and kisses his wife on the cheek before she goes out shopping.

He smiles as he goes down to the lab. The results of his tests are coming out exactly like he expected them too, and he couldn't be happier that his new containment weapon is already functioning at full capacity. He's not done with it yet, but it's so promising that he can't help his giddiness.

He smiles as Maddie enters.

"I've got cookies baking upstairs, remind me to check on them in twenty minutes."

"Sure thing!"

"And I need to go to the dry cleaner's this evening."

"No problem!"

"Is that the Fenton Sack? It looks like it's working."

"It sure is, Mads."

"You might want to change the name, though, Jack."

He smiles while he's waiting for his second coffee to finish brewing in the kitchen and he hears the front door open announcing Danny's arrival. Jack doesn't hesitate- he barges into the living room and grabs his son around the shoulders, steering him into the kitchen so he can boast about his work. Danny nods and glances warily around the room, and it's not lost on Jack that the boy wants to be anywhere but there. He squeezes his shoulder and wishes he could prolong the moment before releasing him. Danny practically runs up the stairs.

He smiles over dinner, and it's a little brighter when Danny makes a rare appearance.

He smiles broadly when Jazz calls and he doesn't drop the expression throughout the entirety of the seven minute conversation.

He smiles as he kisses Maddie goodnight and turns off the bedside lamp. Over the past few years he's noticed that the gap between them has widened. Where they had once existed together, wrapped in each other's arms, there's a valley that pushes them to opposite ends of the bed. Maddie is awake and she will be long after he falls asleep, holding her arms against her stomach rigidly, like she might break.

He smiles until he turns on his side and then he finally lets go. His face hurts. He is tired.

* * *

_It only hurts when I say_

Danny can see the tension written across every inch of her skin. He can feel it, the same way he feels it on Tucker and Sam and the way he imagines Jazz feels it too.

"So how is everything?"

His mother's question is not about what happened during school. It's not about his homework or clubs or college applications. It's not about sports or friends or girls.

* * *

Or, well, it _is_. It's about those things, but he understands that it's about the way he stands, favoring his right let. The way he crawls into his window at three in the morning instead of staying home at night. The way his eyes sit on top of ever-present bags.

The way he _lies_ to her. Over and over again until they start to hurt him just as much as they hurt her.

It's about Jazz and Dad and himself. About their family. About him and all the things he refuses to say.

How is everything?

Danny shoots her a grin and it feels like he's stabbing her through the heart.

"Oh, you know. Just another day."

* * *

**A/N**: Hey there! It's been about five or so years since I've written for the Phandom? Over the past few weeks I've taken it up again, posting one shots and ridiculous crossovers on tumblr, so I think it's about time I compile everything in one place.

For my multi-chapter fic(s) I try to stick to a schedule, but for this I'll simply post whenever I write something new. This in particular was written for the 9th DannyVersary and is largely unedited since I was tired after cranking out a ten page behemoth.

Hope you enjoy!


	2. Fine

Alternate Universe: No one, not even Danny, knew what happened when he got the Fenton Portal working. Ignorance has consequences.

* * *

At first, he thinks he's imagining it.

When he combs his hair in the morning, he has the distinct impression that there is more there than should be. Just a bit, on the edges, trying to pull away from the rest. It's warm, too, and while some part of his mind tells him that his hands should feel burnt and the plastic of the comb melted, it's warm and comforting. Until he realizes that _wait this is all wrong_, runs into the bathroom, and is reassured by the black hair and blue eyes staring back at him. Just like normal.

Throughout the day, though, the fear tangles in his stomach. He pats his head mechanically, as if counting each strand and checking that none have succumb to flames. When he catches his friends' worried glances, he grins and shrugs them off. Eventually, they turn their attention to other things.

He is fine.

He knows that- except, there are those times now when he bolts upright, woken from a nightmare that falls in shards around him as his eyes adjust to the darkness of his room. He wants to say he doesn't remember it, that it's the same as any other and vanishes into the morning life, but no matter the time during the night it occurs it drives sleep away until morning. Every image is painfully vivid and slices into the tender flesh above his cheekbones.

Days pass, and some start to come where he can't check his reflection anymore. The promise of reassurance, the promise that nothing is wrong, isn't stronger than the fear that something _is_. For the rest of the day he cloaks himself in delusion; without proof, there is nothing to say that anything is amiss.

"Rough night?" Sam would ask, her worried gaze cutting through him while the third member of their trio would lean towards them. Feeling the tension that curled around them, he would shrug as if to say _what can you do_ and turn back to the notes he'd be half-heartedly scribbling. The other two would watch him for a while before copying his lead.

It hasn't been this bad since the first time.

It was almost a year ago, now. It was easiest to say that's when it started, though god knows if that's really the case. But a year ago was when he first mentioned it. Incoherent, the words had tumbled from his lips:

"You need to do something. I don't think I can live with this- knowing... knowing what I'm going to _become_."

"Become?" Sam had asked, peering through him.

"Become! I- it's- it's terrible. I never..."

"Slow down. Use full sentences. Pretty sure we learned that in kindergarten, Dan."

"_Don't call me that!_" His cry had pierced the tenuous veil of confusion between them. Sam had stumbled backwards. "Don't call me that." His shoulders had slumped, trembling hands pressed to his knees. "That's what he called himself. I- that's what_ I_ called myself."

Coaxing and gentle words had drawn out whatever he thought had been the truth: that he had encountered some sort of evil version of himself. From the future- a future where everything had been burnt to the ground, where everything he had loved was dead, a future where nothing remained but all-consuming, purposeless evil. And all he could see were his own eyes- blood red and remorseless. Promising a lifetime of exquisite agony.

Assurances were given-_ it's just a dream, Danny. It's okay, nightmares can feel real and I get those too. There's no way that can happen. It's not real. You're just fine._ And then the far less reassuring whispers of pills and treatments were passed around, so he parroted the words back.

"You're right. It's not real. I'm just fine."

So a year later, he finally believes that he's imagining it. Alternate futures, evil timelines- it's all the stuff of science fiction. When he drops the comb, sure that it's an unrecognizable shape and covered in scorch marks, it was just static electricity sparking against his fingers. When he can't look into the mirror, he tells himself he is busy.

If he wasn't, he'd take the time and surely see those same, soft, tired blue eyes staring back at him. Not a monster.

Monsters weren't real.

Except that's not really true.

The fear begins to fade. The other two were right- he is _fine_. There is nothing to be worried about because everything is exactly how it's supposed to be. He accepts the terror and learns to live with it, lets it become part of him until it vanishes in a wisp of nothingness. His reflection holds no dark secret- just an image of who he is. Whole and alive and real. And fine.

He slips into his seat, posture tired but stronger than it has been in a long time. His friends reach out, ask how he is. At hearing their voices he turns and shoots them a grin that's triumphant and comfortable, brows narrowed into something a little more disconcerting than just teasing.

He doesn't know that the blue of his irises bleeds red when he looks back at the board, away from them. Without a backwards glance, he drops off the casual answer-

"I'm just fine."

* * *

**A/N**: I was working on a little original something and realized that it was something I really wanted to bring to life DP style. Just a snippet, I hope it's understandable without too much background information.


	3. Tech Town

"How could this _happen?_"

Sam rubbed soothing circles against Tucker's shoulder blade, surreptitiously shooting a look at Danny over the distraught teen's head. The other boy's expression was caught between pity and amusement, and when Tucker heaved another despairing sigh he slung his arm around his neck in a gesture of solidarity.

"Aw, c'mon man, you really didn't see this coming?"

That only served to make it worse. Tuck hiccuped a dry sob and Sam glared daggers at Danny. He flushed, tripping over his words in order to correct himself, "I didn't mean it like that! You were totally great man it's just- it's a little different and maybe they weren't ready for it-"

Tucker leveled a glare at him that rivaled Sam's, making Danny flinch back. "_Dude_. You unveiled yourself as a half-ghost superhero and they put up _statues_ for you. You're trying to tell me it's because I'm _different?_"

"What Danny was _trying_ to say, Tuck," Sam cut in to ameliorate, "Is just that there's a difference between fighting ghosts and trying to be mayor of a town. Holding office when you're fifteen is really hard- and no one wanted you to succeed more than we did!"

She looked hopeful, eyes alight with patience, but Tucker moaned even louder and fell back against the grassy hill- trapping Danny's arm underneath him. He winced and made to phase himself free but was halted by his girlfriend's withering gaze.

Resigned, Danny stretched out beside his best friend and let his gaze travel to the sky. Cloudless and blue- in darker circumstances it might have seemed mocking. Now, though, Danny closed his eyes for a moment to enjoy to warm, late summer breeze that ruffled his hair.

Obviously, jumping into the comforting without thinking it through was doing more harm than good. Even though Tucker was fairly inconsolable either way, that didn't mean Danny's duty as best friend was diminished any.

"Just think about it this way, you're the first fifteen year old _ever_ to be appointed to office! That's something they can never take away from you!"

"Yeah, and the first to be _impeached_. And probably be the first elected official to ever be impeached in a _month!_"

"Okay that's definitely not true- I'm pretty sure there's been a president in officer for shorter a time than that," Sam supplied, causing Tucker to whine at her. "Right, sorry. Not helping."

Danny sighed and stretched out, readjusting his arm so that his hand fell across Tucker's shoulder. Sam finally followed suit, laying out beside them and resting her palm on Tucker's head. The two on the outsides curled in slightly, knees pressing against the third's legs gently enough to remind him that they were there.

As companionable silence curled amongst them, Danny felt Tucker relax little by little. He smiled softly, meeting Sam's gaze on the other side. She flicked off the teen's beret and gave him a noogie that even elicited a chuckle. The sound swelled, happily complementing the serene scene that stretched out above the trio. Feeling a little bolstered, Danny ventured to ease the tension a little more.

"And seriously man, _Tech Town?_ Even you had to see the error in that."

Beside him, Tucker gave a half-laugh. "Yeah, well, it's not like I had anyone to tell me that wasn't a good idea! Technology makes things easier and more efficient. So it made sense at the time to redirect funds there."

"Yeah- _all of the city's funds_."

"_Thanks_ Sam. I'd totally forgotten."

"Just sayin'."

Danny couldn't help but laugh at the exchange. Two pairs of eyes swiveled to him and their blank curiosity made him chuckle all the harder. A wide grin split his face, and his head lolled back against the knoll.

"I'm just-" He said through gasped breaths, "-Surprised you didn't- start shouting out your plans! I'm Tucker Foley, Amity Park's greatest mayor! I hold dominion over- all _ill conceived- business proposals!_"

Danny's nasally imitation of Technus brought forth a few airy giggles from Sam, and their combined mirth even roused Tucker from his melancholy. It wasn't long before the weight on their chests had dissipated, lost to the sunshine and gentle camaraderie of the afternoon. Danny expected that there would still be some fallout, but he let himself relax and enjoy the moment of blissful comfort shared amongst only the three of the them.

"Fear my technological epicenter of _doom_!" Sam's rendition of the box ghost's booming tone was even more spot on than the previous, and Tucker curled his legs against his stomach to brace himself against the force of his howling.

They took a long while to quiet down, and even once they had they were left breathing deeply and trembling in a way that only the most bellowing laughter could inspire. Slowly, Tucker stretched out and linked his arms around his friends, drawing them in a little closer.

"Thanks, guys."

Sam smiled softly, laying one arm across Tucker's stomach and taking Danny's hand in hers. It wasn't a gesture for the couple- it was simply a way to complete the connection between the three.

"It's no problem- like, literally," Danny supplied. "It's what we do."

Sam nodded. "I like to think that after surviving this long, we've learned a thing or two about putting ourselves back together."

"Well I can't argue with that," the former mayor offered lightly.

Danny watched the two in profile, observing how the sunlight played off of the panes of their faces and the grass outlined their frames. A rush of intense gratitude warmed him, pooling in his chest and spilling out to his limbs. While he had promised the two he'd never take them for granted, he knew that he needed these moments just as much as they did. It was nice to be reminded of what was really important.

Still, he couldn't resist one last jab- "Man, you know you're going to have to face everyone in school on Monday, right?"

* * *

**A/N**: In which Tucker Foley is the Ben Wyatt of Amity Park. There's always a lot of angst in the phandom, and while that's totally delicious I decided I needed to contribute a little shmoopy friendship fluff full of hugs and awful impersonations! :'D

Thank you for the reviews, lovely people! Also, if any of y'all are also Puella Magi Madoka Magica fans, I'm in the process of writing a ridiculous and incredibly angsty fusion. The first chapter is up now if you want to check it out! (It can be read as more of a straight AU if you're not familiar with PMMM.)


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